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How trade bans and local conservation helped save a dazzling blue gecko

Beauty is a curse β€” at least for the turquoise dwarf gecko of central Tanzania. Between December 2004 and July 2009, demand for this gecko from collectors in Europe boomed, leading to the capture and export of an estimated 40,000 of these striking reptiles from Tanzania. β€œI remember when I saw them for the first time [at] a fair, it was about 600 euros per specimen,” or about $700, Dennis RΓΆdder, a herpetologist at the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change in Germany, told Mongabay in a video call. β€œI think within three or four years, the species appeared everywhere across Europe. You could buy them in every pet shop.” Turquoise dwarf geckos (Lygodactylus williamsi) grow to a length of 6-9 centimeters (about 2.5-3.5 inches) and are known from only two small patches of forest in Tanzania: The Kimboza and Ruvu forest reserves. These protected areas cover a combined 34 square kilometers (13 square miles). Adult females have a green-brownish color that mimics the leaves of the trees they live in, but the males’ skins are a vivid contrasting blue, one of the rarest colors in nature, meant to stand out and attract females. Turquoise dwarf gecko (Lygodactylus williamsi). Image Β© Simon via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0). Active during the day, and so fiercely territorial they evict their young hatchlings from their home trees soon after birth, this species lives exclusively on screwpines (Pandanus rabaiensis), a tree found in Kenya and Tanzania. Standing anywhere from 3-20 meters tall…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Fish Fossils from Early Paleocene Fill 10-Million-Year Gap after Dinosaur Extinction

Marine fishes from the Early Paleocene site of Qreiya 3 in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Image credit: Ian Baylatry.

Paleontologists have described an assemblage of marine fish fossils from the 62.2-million-year-old site of Qreiya 3 in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, providing a window into this transition.

The post Fish Fossils from Early Paleocene Fill 10-Million-Year Gap after Dinosaur Extinction appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

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In Malawi, one woman’s farm shows what’s possible with land and support

CHIRADZULU, Malawi β€” Diana Sitima’s farm on the outskirts of Malawi’s commercial capital, Blantyre, is both example and an exception. Where neighboring farmers have planted mostly maize for food and for sale in nearby markets, people drive out to buy sweet potato, pigeon peas and vegetables, bananas and avocado, and eggs produced on Sitima’s 3.5-hectare (8.6-acre) property. Sitima started farming in 1993. Unlike her neighbors, farming was a side hustle to begin with: she worked as an office assistant in Blantyre and her husband had a good job with a bank. Over the next seven years, she and her husband took out a series of micro-loans, renting small parcels of land and hiring people from the village to grow tomatoes for sale in the city. Sitima’s efforts went well, and because her family did not have to rely on their harvest for food or an income at that time, she was able to save the money she earned to take a next step. She quit her office job and acquired a farm of her own in Chiradzulu district, 15 kilometers (9 miles) east of the city. β€œThat’s how I made money to be able to buy this land when it was put up for sale in 2006,” she says. While she was still a part-time farmer, Sitima attended several workshops, where she picked up ideas about agroecological farming β€” an approach combining crops, agroforestry, fish ponds, poultry and livestock, in a self-reinforcing system that protects soil health and reduces the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Meteorite Found in Africa Preserves Evidence of Long-Lost Massive Protoplanet

This is an artist impression of the protoplanetary disk around HD 107146. Image credit: A. Angelich / NRAO / AUI / NSF.

The Northwest Africa (NWA) 12774, an angrite meteorite discovered in the Sahara Desert, likely in Mauritania, appears to be a fragment of a vanished protoplanet, offering the strongest evidence yet that a large planetary body formed and was later destroyed during the Solar System’s chaotic infancy.

The post Meteorite Found in Africa Preserves Evidence of Long-Lost Massive Protoplanet appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

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